songwriting matters

Tag: michelle brasier

Late last year, I posted about the joy of writing music and lyrics for a new show, The Lizard of Oz, with script and direction by Peter Cox and Mark Grentell. If you haven’t seen their film Backyard Ashes, I highly recommend it.

We have only four performances left in our initial season, so here, courtesy of some fine photographers and our absurdly talented designer Aron Dosiak, is the next best thing to seeing the show live at Wagga’s Wollundry Lagoon.

The composer at the piano:

Kane Toad. Photo: Laura Hardwick, Daily Advertiser

My favourite shot of our heroine, Dotty:

Photo: Laura Hardwick, Daily Advertiser

Jacqueline Irvine, who plays Dotty, is way more savvy and much less naive than her character. She’s also physically fitter than the rest of us put together, although I do bring down the company average somewhat.

Andrew Strano is Leonardo de Emu …

Photo: Laura Hardwick, Daily Advertiser

… and Big Red the kangaroo:

Photo: Grant Harper, Livestream Australia

Apart from being talented and hilarious, Andrew is a lyricist, and he’s co-written, completely independently of my effort, a song about being inappropriately close with a family member. So I have a bit of a man-crush on Andrew.

Our villainess, Arachna, is played by Karla Hillam. She manages to belt it out from this balcony to the whole audience, totally unamplified:

Photo: Les Smith, Daily Advertiser

This moment of staging necessitated my favourite bit of songwriting in the show, because we needed something to cover Arachna’s move from the balcony down to ground level. So, in rehearsals, I pretended I was wearing Karla’s outfit, and took the elevator down one floor, with our stage manager Liz holding all the doors for me. That took 58 seconds, and we all thought that was a bit long. So I waddled down the stairs on foot, and that took only 38 seconds. I scrawled these ideas in an old diary while we were rehearsing other scenes:

That night, I wrote a tune, and we learned the vocals the next day. With Karla in costume, from balcony to ground level, it took 40 seconds.

“Karla,” I said, “I just totally Sondheimed your move downstairs.” Then I had to explain to everyone about the elevator in Company, on Boris Aronson’s original set, and then I felt old.

Arachna decrees that only one song can be heard in all of Oz – her song, “It’s All About Me”, an anthem of Idolesque genericness, with an appalling I-V-vi-IV chord progression.

Photo: Grant Harper, Livestream Australia

Jamie Way is Dodo the dog and Bitza the platypus (although he doesn’t know he’s a platypus until the end of the show):

Photo: Grant Harper, Livestream Australia

At this point, Bitza’s identity crisis has forced him to adopt an outrageous French accent. Jamie can do all the accents, while singing, and in celebrity versions if you request them. I haven’t heard him run out of ideas yet.

Katerina’s entrance and exit music, a mishmash of a pavlova recipe and soprano warbling, is just my attempt to transcribe what Michelle improvised effortlessly at the first read-through. I could never have done any better, or any funnier.

The finale:

Photo: Grant Harper, Livestream Australia

By this point, Arachna has been vanquished, Michelle is PC Kookaburra, Karla has dressed up as Katerina Pavlova, I’ve been inside a Lizard’s head (and operated a Bilby rod puppet), and the sun is about to set. It’s a hoot.